Re: Sands of time

: : : Does anyone know of the origin of the phrase, the 'sands of time'? If you do, please email me with an answer or any possible web links to things about it. Thanx.

: : The reference is most likely to sand falling in an hourglass. I don't know when it originated.

: My fave soap?
: Like sands through the hourglass so are the Days of Our Lives.

I first thought of the hourglass but found a walking along the beach/desert reference too.

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime.
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
(From "A Psalm of Life," 1839, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 1807 - 1882)

The sands of time are running out. - "Time is getting short; there will be little opportunity to do what you have to do unless you take the chance now. The phrase is often used with reference to one who has not much longer to live. The allusion is to the hourglass." From "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" revised by Adrian Room (HarperCollinsPublishers, New York, 1999, Sixteenth Edition).